In this field, the products, which can be bottles, cans, vials, boxes, cases, cartons, bundles, or the like, are conveyed between successive handling stations using conveyors essentially of the endless-belt type. The products are handled or even conveyed in a single line, in multiple lines, and thus conveyed even also in bulk.
To have a complete line able to produce continuously despite stoppages of the different stations, for different reasons such as faults or missing consumables, it is necessary to have accumulation solutions between the stations, which receive the products handled by the upstream station while the downstream station cannot operate, and/or which furnish the downstream station with products to be handled when the upstream station cannot operate. The preparation of the products for the downstream station is also necessary, for example, while positioning the flow in multiple lines, etc.
EP1144285 discloses, for example, an accumulation table where the products arrive in multiple lines and come out again in multiple lines at the opposite end. EP2459472 describes in turn an accumulation table where the products leave and enter on the same side, each time, there again, in multiple lines. One of the drawbacks of such solutions is that, to mount it between two stations at least one of the two of which operates in a single line, it is necessary to accommodate a change in the flow, from the single line to the multiple lines, and/or from the multiple lines to the single line, as described in, for example, EP2188199. Such an architecture nevertheless has overall a very considerable footprint, and creates potential problems of jamming during the changes from multiple-line flow to single-line flow. Actually, a flow in bulk is organized quite often with a staggering of the products that it is difficult to eliminate.
Finally, an accumulation solution with a single-line input, a transverse accumulation on a horizontal surface, and then a single-line output is known from WO2014076390. The feeding of such an accumulation surface relies nevertheless on the sequence, downstream from the feeding by the upstream station, of a conveyor at overspeed, and then of a conveyor operating in on/off mode. This latter conveyor makes it possible to put the products in shutdown for their transverse offsetting to the accumulation surface. Upstream, the products on the conveyor at overspeed are spaced apart and then compressed again on the approach to the on/off conveyor. This separation that it causes between the products thus makes it possible to allow the products to accumulate at the terminating end of the conveyor at overspeed, when the downstream conveyor is stopped. At a high rate, this principle of transition between a continuous flow, upstream, and an interrupted flow, downstream, is problematic because it produces accelerations, impacts and decelerations for the products that may be fragile, such as, typically, empty glass bottles.
A need therefore exists in the current state of the art for an accumulation solution that is of large capacity, of reduced bulk, and/or that limits the risks to the products when they are input.